Over thirty U.S. Secret Service agents are requesting an inquiry into whether the DEI initiatives of the Biden administration are hindering the agency’s capacity to fulfill its primary mission.
Jennifer Jacobs, a White House correspondent for Bloomberg, recently shared on social media that a minimum of 39 USSS agents have endorsed a petition urging a congressional examination into whether “diversity, equity, and inclusion” strategies have posed a national security risk.
Although Jacobs did not specifically reference DEI, the post indicated that the agents sharing the petition are worried about “incidents indicative of inadequate training,’ a double standard in disciplinary actions, and a vulnerability ‘to potential insider threats.’”
As per the conservative platform Western Journal, the petition was initiated following an incident involving a female USSS agent from Vice President Kamala Harris’ security team who allegedly experienced a breakdown and engaged in a physical altercation with her commanding officer at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
This incident took place last month. According to Real Clear Politics, the first outlet to cover the event, the agent involved, Michelle Herczeg, arrived at the base and began displaying erratic behavior.
She seized a senior agent’s personal cellphone and deleted applications from it. The agent reclaimed his phone and dismissed the incident.
However, Herczeg allegedly proceeded to begin “mumbling to herself, hid behind curtains, and started throwing items, including menstrual pads, at an agent, telling him that he would need them later to save another agent and telling her peers that they were ‘going to burn in hell and needed to listen to God,’” RCP reported.
Additionally, Herczeg shouted at the special agent in charge, asserting that female officers on Harris’ detail would support her and enable her to keep working.
“At that point, other agents on the scene believed Herczeg was suffering from a mental lapse, and the superior officer … approached her to tell her she was relieved from the assignment,” RCP noted. That was when she “snapped entirely,” a source told the outlet.
She aggressively confronted and pushed her superior, then proceeded to tackle and punch him. Subsequently, other agents intervened to restrain Herczeg, confiscating her gun, handcuffing her, and escorting her away from the situation. RCP added, “Secret Service agents and officers are privately questioning the hiring process and whether the agency had adequately screened Herczeg’s background.”
“Some also wonder whether her hire was part of a diversity, equity, and inclusion push in response to years of staff shortages that may have required the agency to lower its once-strict employment standards and physical performance to reach quotas for female agents and officers.”
As per the Western Journal, agents are raising concerns about whether Herczeg’s recruitment was a part of a larger agenda of a “DEI initiative within the Secret Service to push for a force that’s 30 percent female by 2030.”
According to RCP, back in 2016, Herczeg, then working as a Dallas police officer, sued the city for discrimination, claiming she was attacked by a male superior. Her lawsuit aimed for over $1 million in compensation.
RCP noted that “the Secret Service has ranked either dead last or near the bottom of a government employee survey of job satisfaction conducted annually by the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service.”
RCP journalist Susan Crabtree mentioned on X that the Secret Service is pushing for a DEI-focused investigation similar to the one initiated by the Republican-led Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, the committee expressed its desire to investigate and understand whether “the FBI’s hyper-fixation on hitting Biden Administration-imposed DEI initiatives, rather than qualifications that make the best federal law enforcement candidates and officers, has created a climate within the FBI that puts the American public and American civil liberties at risk.”
